Military Children in Crisis

A seven-year-old second-grader attempted suicide while his father was serving
yet another tour in Iraq. Seven years old. Seven. His mother was one of half
a dozen military spouses I have spoken with about soldiers' kids who have attempted
suicide during their fathers' deployments.

When I was seven, it was 1972, and there were 69,000 US troops in Vietnam.
Men were still being drafted and deployed, but not my dad. So I was spared the
circumstances that led a seven-year-old to try to kill himself.

Three-plus decades ago, parents were exempt from conscription because of overwhelming
concern about the harmful effects of deployment on children. Today, roughly
half of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are parents, many
of whom have served multiple tours. Repeat deployments stress soldiers and escalate
the likelihood of psychological injuries that can last for a lifetime. There
is a small, but rapidly growing, body of evidence suggesting that the same is
true of their children.

The Associated Press reported that "After nearly eight years of war, soldiers
are not the only ones experiencing mental anguish.... Last year, children of
US troops sought outpatient mental health care 2 million times, double the number
at the start of the Iraq war.... Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, inpatient
visits among military children have increased 50 percent. ("War stresses
military kids," July 12, 2009.)

The Veterans Administration's latest research on mental health issues of troops
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that "the prevalence of new diagnoses
in early 2008 had nearly doubled from four years prior in 2004." ("Study
reveals sharp rise in diagnoses of disorders," Stars & Stripes, July
18, 2009.)

The same study revealed that approximately 35 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans who use the Veterans Affairs health care system were diagnosed with
a mental health problem. That figure dovetails perfectly with the results of
a suicide prevention project in San Antonio which found that "nearly 35
percent of more than 200 children from local military families needed to be
treated for mental health conditions." (Army Reserve Family Programs website,
July 2009)

America's military kids are in crisis, presenting acute, debilitating symptoms
of deployment-related stress, virtual mirrors of their parents who served in
Iraq and Afghanistan.

The current rates of mental health problems in OIF/OEF veterans and veterans'
children (35 percent), and the trajectories of escalation from 2003/2004 to
2008 (50 percent), are identical. Further evidence of the direct, causal relationship
between parental deployment and children's mental health is that when the US
"surged" in Iraq, sending more than twenty thousand soldiers and Marines
to stabilize the country, mental health hospitalizations of military kids "surged,"
too.

Should the White House decide to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops
to Afghanistan, there must be a simultaneous stateside deployment of developmentally-appropriate
mental health care providers to minister to the children left behind; children
who have already carried too much of the weight of war.

Military kids whose parent have deployed are using mental health services at
a rate three and a half times higher than the percentage of civilian children
ages 4 to 17 who seek mental health services, according to a study by the US
Department of Health and Human Services.

If we were a nation at war, rather than a military at war, this would be an
American problem. We are not, so it's a Pentagon problem. Thankfully, the Army
is looking at the effects of multiple deployments on children, and taking steps
to help. But at the Association of the US Army's annual meeting earlier this
month, Col. Kris Peterson, a pediatrician at the Military Child and Adolescent
Center of Excellence at Fort Lewis, Washington, admitted that there is a "very
large gap" in providing care.

Mental health care resources are spread so thin that soldiers' kids wait months
for psychiatric care, but there's no Department of Military Children's Affairs,
no powerful lobbyists or highly paid advocates for military kids. They lack
the social cachet and political currency of combat veterans, and there's just
no way to spin a suicidal second-grader into a poster child for patriotism.
Since there's not a Walter Reed to tend the invisible war wounds of Army kids,
there is no potential lightning rod that could galvanize the people or embarrass
the administration.

In the America I grew up in, we wouldn't need one.

That America didn't send soldier-parents to war over and over and over again.
That America wanted to protect its children from the debilitating effects of
a father's deployment. That America believed - and acted in concert with the
belief - that the family unit should not, could not, would not withstand the
burden of having a father in harm's way for a year, much less year after year
after year. That America would have wept at the thought of a suicidal seven-year-old,
and brought the father home immediately.

In this America, a seven-year-old second-grader attempted suicide
while his father was serving yet another tour in Iraq. Seven years
old. Seven.

Stacy Bannerman is the author of When the War Came Home: The Inside
Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind. She is the
force behind the Military Family Leave Act of 2009, and has testified
before Congress twice about the effects of war on military families.
Her husband recently returned from his second deployment to Iraq.
Stacy can be contacted at her website www.stacybannerman.com.